Jim Krusoe - Parsifal

Pearl insisted on accompanying him to the edge of the forest even though Parsifal had said there was no need. “Don’t you worry,” she said. “I know this forest well, and the fire will never get here. It’s just that you are long overdue to leave, and as hard as it is for me to imagine a life here without fixing your scrapes and bruises, and mending your clothes, too — today, with this fire, is as good a day as any for you to start your journey.”

“And, Joe,” Parsifal said, “I was just about to kiss her good-bye, but that moment she coughed and picked up a damp handkerchief to hold against her face, so in the end I just walked down the road, thinking I would come back again and tell her all about my adventures.

“‘Have a good life in the city,’ she told me. ‘And if you see your father, Conrad, give him my best. Au revoir . That’s French for so long ,’ my mother added.”

Au revoir , Parsifal said he called back, his last sight of her standing with her foot on a stump at the forest’s edge, the air smoky with good-byes. Au revoir .

“Fenjewla?” Joe said, looking confused.

On some days Parsifal seems to exist even to himself as only a soundtrack: there is no person to be seen, just the sounds of his footsteps crossing the floor, the sounds of water running, stopping, more footsteps, the sounds of a door creaking open, then swinging shut, the sigh of a cushion being sat on. How much better this is, he thinks, than the constant oppression of sight, the constant bracketing of his life by everything around him: vases, tables, trees, the mirrors in barber shops. On such days there are only sounds and Parsifal — equals in their invisibility. Thinking of this, for the first time he begins to envy those familiar cane-tapping, hard-walking, blind individuals.

Not that Parsifal ever thought less of Joe for having been appointed by the courts.

His second attempt to set out for the forest took more preparation than the first, which, after all, did not go so very far. Instead of five sandwiches Parsifal took sixteen, a candle, matches, a sleeping bag, and four pairs of socks. He carried a canteen full of water, a pocket comb, a pocketknife, and, of course, the map he had purchased from the map store. His plan was this: First he would walk to the bus station, where he would buy a ticket for a bus that would take him to the forest. Next he would spend one night (maybe two) in the forest searching for the cup and then, if he hadn’t found it, return by bus.

Parsifal checked his house to make certain that he had not left any water running or pots on the stove. Then he walked outside and in the direction of the bus station, noticing in the process that the circle of the blind had filled with new walkers. A few of the blind people parted to let him through and then, after he had passed, the circle closed again.

Were the blind growing in numbers? It seemed as though they might be.

Above his head, the bird was circling. Or making spirals.

“ Au revoir ,” Parsifal told the blind men.

To see you again.

Parsifal was about halfway to the bus station when he heard the distinctive whir of a new kind of bomb that, he had read, the sky was using: dozens of ball bearings taken out of the crankshafts of vehicles and then released all at once, blanketing an area. According to the reports, this would soon be followed by the pieces of the actual crankshaft. It was deadly, of course, but the commentary regarding the choice of weapons was divided. Some believed it represented an advance on the part of the sky, while others were of the opinion it was a sign that whoever was in charge of this was running out of things to drop. He couldn’t be sure if the sound of the descending bearings was more like a waterfall, a fountain, or a single strum of a harp, and knew that although it should have been easy to tell one from the other, for some reason it wasn’t.

The silence of a falling star

When Parsifal reached the bus station he could no longer see the bird.

Back in the forest, Parsifal took a little time every day to imagine Conrad, his father, working at his office in the city. In Parsifal’s mind, Conrad sits, wearing his dark, pin-striped suit of fine wool, in his stuffed leather desk chair with wheels and an adjustable back. Meanwhile, as the manicured fingers of one of his father’s hands flip through a stack of stock prospectuses, the other holds a phone to his ear, listening to a client. Behind Conrad stands his secretary, whose name, Parsifal knows, is Margot, and she is dressed in a light blue business suit. True, the skirt is possibly cut too short to technically qualify as proper business attire, but still — according to his father — it’s well within the limits of good taste. Meanwhile, Margot massages his father’s shoulders, then pauses to reach forward slightly over him, her breast just brushing his father’s arm as she brings a steaming cup of cappuccino to Conrad’s lips, which are dry from so much listening. The coffee cup is filled to the very top with whipped cream.

Near Conrad, on the floor, kneels Jimmy, the traveling shoeshine boy who carries his homemade box stuffed full of rags and polish from office to office all day long. The boy is forced to use the stairs — his father once reported to Parsifal, Conrad’s voice rising with indignation — because to see him on the elevator, his sneakers falling apart, his hair poking out beneath his filthy cap, offends the so-called “better-class” folks who need to ride the elevator up and down to their offices each day.

“A disgraceful situation,” Conrad told his son, “but you must understand that the ways of capitalism can be cruel at times.” Conrad also told Parsifal that Jimmy coughed frequently because he suffered from a chronic lung disorder.

Meanwhile, cough, cough .

“What’s that noise?” Parsifal’s father’s client asks him on his end of the phone.

“Oh that,” Conrad answers. “I was just moving some furniture around.”

And so, Jimmy, his fingers dark with polish, caresses Parsifal’s father’s shoes, a happy smile on his lips, because, having to support not only himself but also his mother and his crippled sister, he is glad to be working for a client as generous as the one before him at that moment, by whom he means Parsifal’s father. Margot looks down at the young boy and smiles.

“If only you could be as self-sufficient as young Jimmy,” Conrad used to admonish Parsifal, and then he would follow this wish with some new, heartbreaking detail from the shoeshine boy’s life for Parsifal to mull over.

The bus station was packed as usual. It had been that way ever since air traffic had been suspended due to the attacks, or whatever they were, from the sky. All around Parsifal people were weeping, laughing, greeting friends and family, or just standing dazed from having to get up and walk around after sitting for so many hours. Some buses, of course, had cramped restrooms in the rear, but generally they were too filled with cigarette smokers or irritable bowel sufferers to allow anyone else much access. Around Parsifal, brawny drivers strode about in smart gray uniforms, carrying overnight bags and wearing mock military caps with badges of ringed golden tires on their peaks. Many were former airline pilots put out of business by the general idleness of airplanes.

Also, there were vendors selling from colorful carts, magazine stands, and stands where people could buy tapes with inspirational messages, as well as places to download music, for a fee, into their music players. Mingling unobtrusively with the crowd were plainclothes cops on the alert for pickpockets, bunko artists, and sellers of forged bus tickets that could be purchased for a fraction of the price of a real one and worked just as well. Parsifal approached one of these fake-ticket sellers, a nicely dressed gentleman wearing a bright green vest who was leaning on a coffee machine and had indicated he might have a few tickets available by means of first rubbing his fingers together and then putting his hands into his armpits and discreetly raising and lowering his elbows.